That Malibu is a Beautiful combination.
I run a Merlin block with Dart Pro 1 heads. You are correct about the runnerbottom boats. There was a lot of inbreeding that took place. At one time or another all of the name brand runnerbottom builders worked for or with each other. My first V-Drive was a 1970 Stevens which was a true flat. After that my main interest was drag boats which pretty much meant it was going to be a runnerbottom.
Hondo was the dominate drag hull for years, and eventially with Cole and a few others in the mix. Cole eventially became the dominate drag hull to have until Jim Cole switched to building bigger boats. He said it didn't take much more work to make a big boat than a dragboat and they sold for a lot more money. It also became a liability issue with people getting hurt and him being sued.
A few months ago, I sold my Hallett V-Drive that was a twin turbo BBC. It had belonged to a well known Ski racer that won the Catalina Ski Race many years ago. It was fun to drive and could handle the choppy water we find in the lakes easily. I bought it for the days I couldn't play with the Cole. When it was Ski Raced, it pulled the skier over 110mph in the Catilinal Race. When I had it as a twin turbo, it ran about 100.
When I started with these boats in 1970, almost everthing performance wise was from GM and Horsepower was hard to get. Now, most performance items are not from the Big Three, but from aftermarket sources and horsepower is much easier. I'm old enough to remember when the 57 Chevy came out with fuel injection and made 1 hp per cubic inch which was unheard of at the time and it was a race motor, now my factory Tahoe makes more per cubic inch and is bigger while still getting good fuel economy and idles smoothly.
Now, I'm starting to slow down.
You and I must be about the same age. I am 76, born in ‘47. I started Boat Racing in 1971.
You are sure right about the parts availability now as compared to way back when. There were no aftermarket heads, rods were either factory, Carrillo, or aluminum. There were a few aftermarket blocks to be had,if you owned a bank.
Now, just open up the Summit or Jeggs catalogue and get out the credit card.
We had two sets of really nice original AFR heads. They had a 1/4 inch angle cut, raised D port exaust ports, huge intake runners. Ken Sperling, the founder of AFR, was a cylinder head wizard.
The picture I posted of my boat has those heads on that 399. We painted them black to hold in heat.
one of the more interesting K boat engines I built was a 452. We did that by taking the 427 inch .400 tall truck block and boring it .125 over. I actually used aluminum rods because of the length, a big no-no in a circle boat.
With a set of those AFR heads, it bumped 14 to 1 compression, I ran it on methanol through those big 3 inch stagger tube Crower injectors. That thing would rev like a die grinder. In 1996, I went to Miami Marine Stadium and turned a 5 lap average of 98.8 mph. The record at that time was held by Julian Pettingill at a touch over 101 mph in his Beismeyer Cold Fire. I ended up slinging a rod out of it at an outlaw race at Lake Liberty not soon afterward. I was darned lucky it didn’t hurt those heads.
I’m not sure how much you know about setting up a circle boat. We ran right hand turning props so the boat would turn left really well. That required us to run off of the front of the engine, as oppose to to drag boats that ran off of the back. We put a lot of “torque corner” in the cavitation plates on the left side for turning, combined with longer arms on the cavitation rod to on that side to pull it back even when you ran fast on the straight always.
I never ran a blower. I considered them too violent. Besides, if you had a boat that would accelerate out of the turns hard and would run an honest 100 mph and handle good on the straights AFTER the water got rough, you could compete.
Sometimes I scan the boat want adds looking at ‘70’s vintage Beisemyer hulls. Heck, I would like to have one just to look at.
